Wins & Losses- Clay chats with Cousin Sal

This week on Wins & Losses, Clay Travis is joined by fellow Lock It In star Cousin Sal. The two dive into Cousin Sal’s life and how he got from graduating law school, to being a huge success in the entertainment industry. Clay asks Cousin Sal about his journey to becoming a writer for his cousin, Jimmy Kimmel, and the path they took together in entertainment starting with Win Ben Stein’s Money, The Man Show and eventually Jimmy Kimmel Live! They also get into how social media has changed the entertainment industry and the book Cousin Sal is currently writing. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Wins and Losses with Clay Trevis. Clay talks
with the most entertaining people in sports, entertainment and business.
Now here's Clay Trevis. We walcome into Winston Losses podcast.
I hope you guys are having a good time wherever
you may be, as we moved closer and closer to Thanksgiving,
at least if you're listening in nineteen, I know a

(00:22):
lot of people are gonna be on the road, including
Cousin sal one of the co hosts of Walking In,
who is with Me every day from four thirty to
five thirty Eastern one thirty Pacific on f S one. UH.
He is currently leading season two of the show. But
it occurs to me, I don't really know that much
about anything uh in his life in the grand scheme

(00:43):
of things to where he ended up on the show
with me and everything else. We have a fantastic time,
so I think he's with us now. You can find
him on Twitter at Cousin sal Uh and sal Uh.
That I kind of want to start with that at
the beginning, where did you like? What was the first
time you thought, Hey, maybe I can make a living
in uh? In the entertainment space. Was I know your

(01:03):
cousin is Jimmy Kimmel. Was it like, did you guys
talk about it when you were kids? Like? What was
what was like a moment where you thought, hey, maybe
we could do this? Well? Can we first start with
you giving out my right freaking Twitter handle. It's at
the cousin south Yes, my bad, I'm already already over one. Yes.
Uh so all right, so at the cousins say, I

(01:25):
know this is very sure. I want to get into
this real quick, really quick before I answer questions. I
love this because you have a radio show, a successful
radio show, and whether or not you want to admit it,
you want to phase this radio show out, and so
you start this podcast. And now this podcast is wildly
uh wildly um popular, and the radio show is doing

(01:45):
better than ever. You're never gonna stop talking. You're just
gonna have to be on the air all the time.
This is backfired. But this is what my wife says
all the time. I keep trying to find ways to
do less work, and inevitably, every time I tried to
do that, I end up working more. So I don't
know the solution of this at all. This is this
is why I told her that I'm going to retire
at fifty. She doesn't believe me, but I'm like, I'm

(02:06):
forty right now. I want to go hard for ten
more years and then I'm just vanishing. That's my plan
right now. Just I'm gonna make enough money, right, don't
have to do anything for the rest of my life,
and I'm just gonna vanish. I kind of do like
the fight and being in the middle of things every
day on a day to day basis, but I would
like to be able to sleep. Um, so I know,
and I know that was your plan. I mean, you
are on the air or some in the air every

(02:28):
hour of the die. I mean you might as well
just start posting your therapy sessions online, right basically. You know,
my wife said the other day, and I think she's
right that radio is my therapy, because she said, you're
so lucky that you get to come on every day
and just say whatever you think, and you know, people
don't have to agree or disagree with it, but you
get every thought thought out of your head and so

(02:49):
you don't bottle anything up. And the result is you
kind of walk around lighter than air because you aren't
like there's nothing bottled up inside. You just put it
all out there. And I do think there's some truth
to that. Like I I do think that that is Uh,
I'm healthier since I started doing radio for that reason,
and it's kind of it's kind of crazy, but I
don't have just spend money on therapy. So let's go
back to you first before we go back to how

(03:11):
you got started. How terrified were you? So? We had
never met right you and I. For people out there
who are not aware, the very first time we met,
I walked into a Fox office of our boss, Charlie Dixon.
You were already there, and I had heard that you
were a really nice guy, but I didn't even know
what you looked like. And so I was like, yeah,
I've heard cousin Sal is a really good guy. And

(03:33):
then Charlie like, he's like, hey, come out here for Ben.
I want you to go see somebody. He's like, Hey,
that's cousin Sal. He's in the office with us now.
And I was like, oh, really, well, it's a good
thing that I said something positive then, I guess, because
because otherwise it could have been a mess. But were
you you probably did not hear the same things about
me like I heard good things about you. Were you terrified?
Were you like this guy is gonna be totally insufferable?

(03:53):
I was a little bit. And some people described you
to me as well, this is going to be the
Simon Cowell of your show, and I was like, all right,
that could go one of two ways. You know, I
don't know if this is a routine with Simon Cowell
or not, or if you could turn it off where
we could be friends or not. But uh, I had
heard a lot of things. I've heard that. I heard
that your persona off the air is the same and

(04:16):
yet it's charming, and that everybody who knows you in
this capacity likes you. But then I also heard a
lot of things that you had done the CNN interview
and the and the whole Uh what I think I
heard you about Gregg Siano or something, And then it
was like there was I was like, wow, this is
a lot to overcome for me to be uh buddies

(04:36):
with this guy. And then uh, but then I almost
immediately knew that it was gonna work out. I don't
know why, but I could just I could just tell
did you did you feel that too? Or yeah? Yeah?
For people who don't know. So our show got put
together and you know a lot more about television than
I do. But even on like this doesn't happen very often.
Our show got put together and like basically the space
of six d eight weeks and uh and that might

(04:59):
even be an exact a duration of how quickly this
thing came together, from the point of you know, us
a green to do it to the launch of the show.
And really the first time we were in a room
together other than we went out to dinner, which was
like a big kind of group dinner, we did a
which would call basically like a table read you me,
Todd Ferman and Rachel Bannetta. Was the first time we've
been in a room. And I thought our table read

(05:21):
went insanely smooth, right, and and I was like, oh,
this could be pretty good. And from that point on,
I was like, I think this show is gonna be
a lot of fun, and it has. I mean, I
genuinely love doing it every day. Well I do too,
And you know, I don't know if you remember what
happened the second day, so that room were that day
were all together in the room, and then we tried
one where you guys were on some kind of weird
satellite which wasn't even uh, it wasn't even in sync

(05:44):
with the satellite we used today. And that was a disaster.
That was like the third day and that was really bad.
Like the delay was about three times as long as
it is and it's not great right now. So um,
and we were, you know, we were all green and
we didn't know how to handle it. And I remember thinking,
oh boy, I think we're gonna all have to be

(06:05):
in the same We're gonna have to move to Nashville
or something. Yeah, right there. Yeah, for people who don't know,
Todd does the show from Vegas, I do it from Nashville.
You are typically I mean you travel sometimes, but you're
typically on the main uh Fox lot in l A
with Rachel. But it's been awesome since we got going.
So let's circle back around. So how did you So

(06:25):
at what point did you start thinking, I know, you
went to undergrad. I think at Sunny I was a
wiggo am I right about that, that's right to sleep
Upstate New York. It was a Sunny school, that's yeah.
And I went to high school on uh in Long Island.
So it was about a six hour six hour drive
and then you went to law school, right, Like, how
did that happen? You know, I graduated, uh high school,

(06:47):
I'm sorry, I graduated college. And I had like two
jobs fall through, and one of them was a phone
screener for my cousin, Jimmy. I had already always done
like radio bits for him. You liked this because he
was fired from like seven radio jobs. Yeah, and it's
bad and he was making you know, he was going
from one job that made dollars, next that made two thousand,

(07:11):
and by the time he got the twenty four thousand,
he had a wife and kid, and you know, it's visible.
It was miserable all the way through. But somewhere along
the line after college, he's like, you could be my
phone screener for me here in Tampa. And I said,
all right, what what the hell do I care? I
have nothing else lined up. I'll do that. And then
that fell through. I think like the program director gave

(07:32):
him an ultimating. He was like, yeah, we'll hire your
cousin as a phone screener, but uh, then you can't
ask for a race for another three years. Like back
that even exists, Like what kind of deal with that? Anyway.
He's like, uh, yeah, to save my marriage temporarily and
uh the phone screener thing on hold. So I really
had nothing else to do. I had applied for a

(07:52):
local law school, uh Toro Law, which I joked was
part lawn maintenance and part law, but thoral law and
in Long Island. Uh. And I got in and it
was like twenty minutes from my house and I was like,
oh man, I really have nothing to do. But I'm
not I'm not into law at all. And then everyone's like, well,
you can become a businessman. You could do anything with

(08:12):
the law degree. You can a good business head and everything.
I was like all right, And then I graduated. No
one's like, oh, my son, the lawyer. You have to
be a lawyer. Now. I was like, wait a minute,
this wasn't our deal. I hate law, but were you
like that reading and stuff. I love the reading and
I liked the law school part of it. But I

(08:33):
at twenty when I started practicing. So I graduated, uh
laur and I you know, my wife got married. We
moved to the US Virgin Islands because I was like,
this will be so exciting. You know, we're young, we
don't have any kids. And I remember being in that
office and having what I would call a quarter life crisis,
you know, where I was like, oh my god, this
is never going to end, you know, like you know,

(08:55):
because I mean, and look, I didn't hate it. I mean,
there are a lot of worse jobs you could have,
and I'm not trying to say like being a lawyer
is the worst thing you could ever do. I loved
to law school. But I remember we were having an
argument over whether a law filing was ready, was like
legal or not, because whether February twenty ninth happening was
excusable neglect. In other words, somebody missed a filing because

(09:18):
it's a leap year, right, and so there's an extra
day on the calendar, which a typical lawyer thing, right,
But people are like really fired up and arguing about
it and had been going on forever. And I was like,
did I really spend all this money to go to
law school so I could argue about whether February was
excusable neglect? So now I argue about whether the Cowboys
are going to cover on a television show. So I've

(09:39):
clearly ended up with a much more significant thing. But no,
I knew. I didn't like it. It was just so
slow moving and uh, and I wanted to get out.
But that's when I started writing online, which then led
to radio. But so, what did you do? Did you
go practice in a firm or what did you do
when you graduated? Well, what's interesting? Really quick? Before you
you uh, with the whole thing with the football. I
remember an orientation at law school. I was still a

(10:01):
gigantic football fan back then, and I was in like
six fantasy leagues, and I had this terrible gambling addiction.
And I remember asking everyone like, hey, do you watch
do you watch someday like adding the second year students,
and they're like, oh, no, there's no time for that. Well,
I'm watching football on Sundays. I don't care whatever. If
I come away with it with these I'll be okay

(10:22):
as long as I get to watch football Sundays. And
sure enough, that's pretty much what I did. But no,
I graduated and uh and my girlfriend at the time,
her mother was a big real estate um a broker,
and so she had ties to a real estate attorney's office,
and that that's it. I would just like shovel papers.
I was an attorney that represented like thirty banks, and

(10:43):
I would go to closings all over the Bronx, Brooklyn Queens,
all of these terrible burrows, and uh yeah, I never
really liked a minute of it. So you were like
years old doing this, that's right. I came right out
of high school college right to law school. Okay, so
that was the only about it. I got a good
story for you about law school too, I remember, so

(11:04):
I I was pretty good at talking, right like, so
if I got called in on on in class, I
could handle, you know, the questions the socratic method that
the teacher would ask. And I remember I did really
well early in September um in fact, and this is
a little bit of a little bit of a dark story,
but after September eleven, I was a first year law
student in September eleventh, even September eleven half and and

(11:25):
for like three weeks after that, the rest of September,
if I remember correctly, they decided that it was such
a traumatic thing and so many different people had connections
to either New York or d C. And the the
whole process that they would not just randomly call on
people because they were afraid that they would find you know,
like somebody would have not been able to sleep or whatever,
and then there they fall apart, you know, getting questions.

(11:47):
So you only they only took volunteers, so I volunteered.
I was like, screw it, I'm happy to talk, you know.
I wasn't you know, you know, unable to speak after
nine eleven or anything. And I killed it, like discussing
one of the cases in in the class. And so
all the smartest kids in this section they came up
to me after class and they were like, hey, we
want you to be in our study group. We're all
gonna get you know, there's the curve, we're all gonna

(12:09):
get a's. We think that you will kill it. Do
you want to join our study group? I mean, these
were like, you know, the the gunners of the gunners
in the law school. And I was like, I want
to think about it a little bit. You know. I
was like when do you meet? And they were like, well,
we meet on Saturdays. And I was like, well, I
mean I watched college football all day Saturday, Like what
time do you meet? And they're like, what, we meet
five hours on Saturdays. You know, I was like I can't,
I can't do that. I mean, I'm gonna sit and

(12:31):
watch college football to day. I mean, I understand you
got a study, but I'm not giving up college football.
Uh So so that I had a kind of a
similar experience where I was like, I liked the law school,
but I wasn't willing to give up the things that
I like to be a lawyer. Does that make sense? Absolutely?
But you've done more with your degree than I have.
I mean I really a kind of abandoned it almost
bread away, like two or two years into uh being

(12:53):
a real estate attorney. But you you had a little brag.
You got to see the Virgin Islands. At least I
didn't do any of that. And you know, I think
I should have known then instead of just finishing paying
off my loans um twenty seven years later, whatever, I
just finished my two friendship with the Cowboys or something. Yeah,

(13:14):
I hung it on the refrigerator. I was like, this
is my my crowning achievement right here. Be done. Crazy
how long it takes to pay it off? So okay,
you do it for two years and then what happens?
How do you so you're you're a real estate attorney
running all over New York and then what happens and
you're like, screw it, I'm out, and what did you do?
So this was my the rock bottom for me. But
I had dated a girl for eight years. Uh in

(13:36):
Long Island. We went to upstate. Uh we're together upstate
at school and college, and we happened to live twenty
minutes from each other in real life after school. So um.
So then I was like, yeah, the mother helps me
get a job, and I'm doing this real estate stuff.
And we had just gone to a wedding in Los
Angeles and my cousin Jimmy is now a little more established.

(13:58):
He's about to get the job hosting wind Benstein's money.
He's like, you know, I could use a writer. I
do the syndicated sports editorials that run on like forty stations,
which seems like a big deal at the time. I
can give you a hundred dollars each and uh for
each one, and uh, you know, maybe you could help
write for me for this game show. Like I can't
leave New York. I'm in five softball leagues, have from

(14:21):
great here that I have this job. I'm a lawyer.
It doesn't make sense. I didn't I was a prisoner
to that stupid loan. I was like, I can't leave law,
no matter how much I dislike, you know, because I
owe all this money and things have to make sense.
A lot of people listening to us right now know
exactly what you're talking about if you've got those student
loans kind of hanging over your head. So I would

(14:42):
suggest to get out. I really wild, but I don't know.
You know, everyone's different. But rock bottom for me was
I'm driving this eighty four Chevy Cavalier. It was on
its last legs, and like I said, like I'd have
a closing in like in the Bronx at ten am,
and then I'd have another one somewhere in like Midtown Manhattan,
twelve thirty. It works differently on the East Coast is

(15:02):
to make a bigger deal out of real estate closing,
and then I would have to be in Suffer, New York,
which is over the Tappanzee Bridge at like three thirty,
and then make my way all the way back to
Long Island. So I wasn't getting home until eight o'clock.
And this stupid car breaks down on the bridge and
like almost like a fire under the hood and everything else,
and like I was almost in tears. It was raining,

(15:24):
you know. I of course didn't have triple A or anything,
so I don't even know how the hell I got
it out of there, but I was like, I gotta
get out of here. I absolutely did, obviously, like it's pouring, right.
That was the day I got back from the flight
from the wedding in Los Angeles, which is obviously it
was like April was like still like eighty two degrees,
Like what the hell am I doing right now? So

(15:44):
I like, sometimes it has to slap you in the face.
Did you have a moment like that or you were
just like all right, I did this, and I'm gonna
move on. And we're live here outside the Perez family home,
just waiting for them, and there they go, almost on time.
This morning. Mom is coming out the on door strong
with a double arm kid carry. Looks like Dad has
the bags. Daughter is bringing up the rear. Oh, but

(16:06):
the diaper bag wasn't closed. Diapers and toys are everywhere.
But Mom has just nailed the perfect car seat buckle
for the toddler. And now the eldest daughter, who looks
to be about nine or ten, has secured herself in
the booster seat. Dad SIPs the bag clothes and they're off,
But looks like Mom doesn't realize her coffee cup is

(16:28):
still on the roof of the car, and there it goes. Oh,
that's a shame that mug was a fan favorite. Don't
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(16:49):
you by Mizza and the AD Council. If I could
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if you could find a way to get inside each
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(17:10):
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Brought to you by the AD Council. Welcome Out and Shoes.
Adoption of teams from foster care is a topic not
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I'm April Dinuity, host of the new podcast Navigating Adoption
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(17:34):
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Us Kids, brought to you by the U. S Department
of Health, that Human Services Administration for Children and Families,
and the ad Council. I will give eternal credit to
my wife for this, because I came back from the

(17:56):
Virgin Islands and I had an idea for a book, um,
And I had started to write online, wasn't making any
money at all, but the idea for the book was.
I was obviously a huge SEC football fan. And there
have been a book written about this guy who followed
Alabama football around and when I was a kid growing up,
and it had done well called Rammer Jammer Yellowhammer by

(18:16):
a guy named Warren st. John. Is a great book. Um.
And when I was a kid growing up, my dad
and his friends would go to one SEC football game
every year on the road. They were big Tennessee fans
and they would pick one every year. Is a big deal.
He and his buddies, they go away and and the
goal was to go to every SEC stadium. That's a
big deal in the SEC. Still, It's like, hey, I

(18:37):
want to be able to see a game and every
opposing team stadium. So I thought to myself, what if
I spend the fall going around writing a book about
why SEC football matters? And I'll call it Dixie Land
a Light. And I pitched it to my wife. And
you know, my wife at this time was back in school.
We had met him law school, but she didn't want
to be a lawyer, so she went back to school.
She was at Vanderbilt to beget her counseling degree. And

(18:58):
I said, I got this idea. Instead of practicing the
law this fall, I'm gonna write a book. I'm gonna
go around to all twelve SEC football stadium I'm gonna
stay do it cheap, stay with buddies on the couch
like that. I knew that were fans of the teams. Uh,
And I'm gonna turn it into a book. And I
gave her that I had made the whole roster of
the games that I would go to and exactly what
it be called. And to her eternal credit, she said,
what about going to the cocktail party, which wasn't on campus,

(19:21):
but she had heard of Florida Georgia knew was a
big deal and so she supported it, and so that
was to me, that was my sort of opportunity. To me,
I think that was my jumping off point too. I
think I can make a living doing this. And also
credit to my uncle, who I think everybody's self doubts
a lot um. And so when I was writing online,
I was making a hundred dollars a week, right, I

(19:42):
mean I was writing these columns grind in a way.
And my uncle said, it's not different if one of
your parents says something. But my uncle said he was
reading the columns and he was like, hey, I think
one day Clay could make a living doing this. And
that was just that was kind of my jumping off point.
I had a lot of prap falls along the way,
but but that was that was my kind of declaration

(20:04):
of independence, for lack of a better term, And because
of that, you devote forty two minutes of our forty
four actual show minutes after commercial. I'm internally I'm internally
loyal and in debt. Yes, So that was my getaway. So, okay,
your car breaks down on the Tapanzee Bridge. Uh, you
don't know how you got off, but you get Eventually

(20:25):
you get back home and you call Jimmy and you're like,
I'll take it, whatever you want, I'll come. So that
was basically it. And you know, the tough thing was
going to be, uh, breaking the news to my girlfriend
of eight years. And I remember I was going out
there June thirteenth and it was Memorial Day and I
still hadn't told her, and my cousin broke the news
to didn't mean to, but like, what do you think

(20:48):
of Sally? Oh? My god? And I was just like
I could just tell without hearing it. I could just
see the body language in the backyard they were going.
They were laying out on a blanket and I was like, oh,
that's it. I'm dead. I am absolutely dead, seeing like
why the fun why wouldn't you tell me? She's screaming
at me, like why wouldn't I tell you? Because of

(21:08):
this look how you're behaving and which I thought was
funny at the time but did not make things any easier. Um,
but I did go there, and you know, we had
the East Coast, the long distance relationship that it didn't
work out, you know, for for many reasons, but I'm
glad I did. And I remember trying to figure out
how I can make it work. Um doing the l

(21:29):
A job writing the sports editorials from New York. But
I was like, I gotta, I gotta stay here in
la This is ridiculous. It's so much. It's so much
easier to be unemployed or semi employed in l A,
New York. But I would recommend if you're looking to
make a big departure from whatever you've done, if it's
law or whatever else, don't don't feel indebted to the

(21:50):
debt and do it because it's always gonna be worse
down the road's gonna be tougher to BA. You have
one kid, You're gonna have three kids, and it's gonna
be and then you'll ever get away. So I think
it's important to um, just trust your instincts when it
comes to these. So what was your salary? Remember what
you made when you moved to l A. And where
did you live? So I was I made twenty eight

(22:11):
thousand five hulls as a lawyer a year, and then
I moved there and my cousin Jimmy gave me all
the money for the sports editorials, and that was a
hundred dollars a day, uh, five days a week, so
that's what like almost twenty five grand the year. But
that was really just I was really just doing these
sports editorials and I wasn't doing anything else. I'm like, hey,
I actually get like a bartending job, and and my

(22:33):
cousin Jimmy is like, no, no, no, because it's all perception.
If people see you as a bartender, then you'll be
labeled a bartender. I was like, all right, but I
could I could really use the extra money try to
figure something else out. But then, like I said, when
Ben signed, Money came on and he hired me on
as a writer, not a writer of the questions, but
I would help him with jokes. I had always done

(22:55):
like um character bits for him on his radio shows
wherever he bounced around two, so he knew I could
do voices and write bits and everything. So when he
was interviewing contestants, we would figure out together what the
funniest things about them were. And uh, and then he
came up with The Man Show. I think the Man
Show overlapped with when Ben Stein's Money, and I was
one of the writers on that show, and that was

(23:16):
the best time. I think that was the best time
in my life. I really think. Well, I mean you
could if you up to ask answer the best time
in your life. It sounds shitty if you say it's
when you didn't have kids, But when I didn't have kids,
that was the best time in my life. That was
a hellgate party in the parking lot before every episode
and just people, crazy people, and you know, when it

(23:39):
was acceptable to look at girls stir there were there
are plenty of trip So I loved I loved The
Man Show. I watched ben Stein's Money back in the day,
like because I remember that coming on and being popular,
and I loved watching that show. But then I loved
The Man Show. I mean I loved everything about it.
I thought it was hysterical. I still think it's hysterical,

(24:01):
which you're not supposed to think that it's hysterical anymore
now because everything's like offensive. But so, how does that
show end up happening? So like, how does the pitch happen?
How does the pilot have I'm genuinely curious because you
were there as that process is going on. When did
Jimmy meet Adam Carolla. When did you meet Adam Coroll? Like,
how does that show happen? Jimmy was so. Jimmy was

(24:21):
a sports guy on K Rock, was popular radio show
a station out here, and he got into a mix
up with the engineer, this guy, Michael, Michael the maintenance man.
He was the engineer of the radio program, and they
decided to, uh have a fight, like a boxing match.
I think they called this the bleet It and they're
gonna cell tickets to it, and all the fans were

(24:41):
gonna go. And Jimmy wanted wanted to be trained by somebody,
and Adam Carolla answered the ad or called in or
something and showed up to train Michael the maintenance man,
the other guy. But Jimmy answered the door Rock to
let him in and then spoke to him. And you know,
because Adam was a box he like he was. He's
actually a good boxer. He actually trained people himself, and

(25:04):
he made a boxing movie called The Hammer, which is
pretty good, and uh, Jimmy's talkings and he was like, wow,
this guy is really funny. He's like, screw Michael maintenance man,
You're gonna train me? And uh he did, and I
think Jimmy lost it was. It was unspectacular fashion, but
they came. They became fast friends from there, and then
Adam started doing characters on k Rock and and that's

(25:25):
where it started. And then they came up with the
idea for the Man Show. They were like, you know,
let's just do something from our point of view. This
will be fun. We'll do a tongue in cheek, but
I think guys will go crazy for it. And they
pitched at Michael Babes, who had gotten Jimmy the job
on ben Stein's Money, heard their pitch and loved it.
And he was one of the executives at ABC at

(25:45):
the time. He was the guy behind uh, he was
the guy behind who wants to be a millionaire, right
and all that. Yes, that was a little bit before
this was a little bit before that. But he was
already getting some juice and he, you know, he had
the ear of the big executives at ABC, and ABC
paid for the pilot for The Man Show, and um,
it was the Tuesday before the upfronts. It was on

(26:08):
the docket. It was gonna be on a Saturday at
ten o'clock. And then the story that we heard is
that Uh, Michael Eisner went in a room, saw the
pilot and then walked out like six minutes later. This
is this is not for network television. And they had
like fifteen pages of notes and everyone was bummed out.
But uh, Comedy Central jumped right in and say, hey,

(26:31):
this is kind of exactly what we're looking for. And
Jimmy had known Matt and Trey also that and Matt
Stone and Trey Parker and you know, South Park was big,
so he got an in at Comedy Central and yeah,
that's how it all started. Okay, so what is your
role then? So the Demand show gets picked up? And
I mean how many years had you been in l
A at that point? So it wasn't even a year

(26:52):
I think it was. So your timing was Your timing
was incredible, right, I mean you get to l A
and then boom you're writing on them and show. So
what's the what's the life like? You were just kind
of give us a description, but what's the life like
at that time for The Man Show? You guys tape?
How often? Like what's your day to day when you're
writing for The Man Show? I mean it was so,
I mean everything about it was great because it's a

(27:14):
bunch of like at the time, I think I was
in my late twenties, and it's a bunch of guys
my age or maybe a little older. And we're just
like high school idiots throwing around far jokes and other
uh you know, uh, the other ideas, Lincoln, just a
bunch of machismo going around. And we had, like you said,
scantily girls on jumping on trampoline willfully. And you know,

(27:37):
no one really there was no one said a bad
word about it either, like I said a different time,
and it was just great. It just wasn't We had
one show a week, one thirty minute show a week.
Oh my god. So all the all the tape bits
we could you know, we can get edited them down
to however short we wanted to. It could be perfect.
You know. There was no stress. We would go out
every night. It was a great job. It really was.

(27:59):
So how long did you do that? So then I
wrote on that for three years, and then I took
over for well there was a girl, Nancy Pimento took
over for Jimmy hosting Ben Stein's Money. And then I
got a crack at it, crack at it, and I
got the audition, I beat out will Leeton of Star
Trek fame. I think although he was stand by me right,

(28:21):
it was down to see me and will Leeton, he
was the main character and stand by me and uh
and I got it and uh yeah, I hosted that
and Ben is you would love then. By the way,
next time you come out here, we have to grab
a dinner. Yeah, do Lean? You know you're Lean the
same way. Politically, I think a lot of them on
a lot of issues. And he is just a great

(28:42):
guy but a super sore loser. I mean the stores
that we have to explain. I mean he would win
of the games. He would go against three contestants, which
would then get narrowed down to one contestant in the
final round, and they put him, if you've never seen
the show, in an isolation booth against the contestant. They
get ten questions for sixty seconds, very tough questions, and

(29:03):
he would typically get seven or eight out of ten
and the contestan would get three or four. But if
he lost, and if he lost the first game, it
was a bad day. It was like we did four
games a day. We would take four shows a day,
and if he lost the first one, he would stay
in his dressing room for about two and a half hours.
So I was like, I would always pray, like, please,

(29:25):
please just lose the last show of the day, because
you can't win all of them, because then the show
is like done, no one's gonna watch it. But if
you're gonna lose, just lose the last one so we
could all go home. But what once Once he would
lose the first one and they would pay the audience
members to be out there there was It was basically
they would bust in a group of meth addics that
would say, like fo dollars to watch from the whole day.

(29:47):
But it was a lot of fun then was a
great guy. Be sure to catch live editions about Kicked
the coverage with Clay Travis week days at six am
Eastern three am Pacific. What grows in the forest too, ease? Sure? No,
what else grows in the forest, Our imagination, our sense
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(30:08):
we disconnect from this and connect with this, we reconnect
with each other. The forest is closer than you think.
Find a forest near you and start exploring. I Discover
the Forest dot Org brought to you by the United
States Forest Service and the AD Council. What grows in

(30:29):
the forest trees? Sure, No. What else grows in the forest,
Our imagination, our sense of wonder, and our family bonds
grow too, because when we disconnect from this and connect
with this, we reconnect with each other. The forest is
closer than you think. Find a forest near you and

(30:50):
start exploring. I Discover the Forest dot org brought to
you by the United States Forest Service and the AD Council.
Look for your children's eyes to see a true magic
of a forest. It's a storybook world for them. You
look and see a tree, They see the wrinkled face
of a wizard with arms outstretched to the sky. They

(31:10):
see treasure and pebbles. They see a windy path that
could lead to adventure, and they see you. They're fearless. Guide.
Is this fascinating world? Find a forest near you and
start exploring. A Discover the Forest dot org brought to
you by the United States Forest Service and the AD Council.
We're talking to at the Cousin Soal on Twitter. This
is a Wins and Losses podcast. I am Clay Travis.

(31:33):
Make sure you go follow South. Tell him how much
you're loving this podcast on his on his Twitter feed.
So you're there, you do Windbinstein's and then what happens next? Um,
well that's what nine eleven happens next. Cut that down.
I only do it but just to give it a timeline,
and I I'm getting married a few months after. All right, well,

(31:54):
hold on, let's go. Let's go back to the Let's
go back to how you met your wife, because we
just came out. I brought my wife out to your
Halloween party. Uh Rachel Bannetta. The whole, the whole show
is there, with the exception of Todd Ferman who won't
get on an airplane and fly forty five minutes because
it's a weekend and he can't be away for forty
five minutes because that's about how long it takes to
fly Vegas to l A from games for forty five minutes.

(32:18):
So we're there, We have an awesome time. Your wife
is outstanding, but the way you guys met is also
pretty pretty fantastic. How did you guys meet? So this
is um, so this is at the Man Show and
one of our buddy was getting married, our buddy Donnick,
who had like a development deal. He was a head

(32:38):
writer for Letterman for many years, and uh he had
a development deale and uh so he's getting married and
that is in Mexico and that wasn't even gonna go.
I had just broken up with my girlfriend. I was like,
you know what, I don't feel like having fun right now,
certainly not in Mexican. This is the one from the
East Coast that you tried to go long distance with. Okay,

(32:59):
so you bring couple. Yeah yeah, right. So I didn't
want to be the bad guy, but eventually I broke
it off or whatever. So I was like, I was
feeling like a shitty person. I'm like, I'm not gonna
go celebrate. And then we go, and uh, I end
up going. Jimmy convinces me a bunch of us go
out there and we hit a bar called Carlos O'Brien's,

(33:19):
and uh we ended up naming our dog Carlos O'Brien.
My wife and I. But she's there with a group
of girls who will go there just there on spring
break from grad school and we meet them and our
buddy Daniel, who was a master wrangler who actually like
individually hired each of the Juggie Dance squad girl like

(33:40):
script plots and everything, and uh, he was there and
he wrangled. So she was part of one group. There
were four groups that he rounded up and put in
cabs at this bar, Carlos O'Brien's, and brought them back
to this, uh this kind of this mansion we rented in,
uh in Portavoyarda, And so all these world are there

(34:00):
and I just end up talking to Melissa and we
played tennis. There was a tennis court, and nothing happened
except that we hit it off and we talked all night,
and everyone was excited that I was looking at another girl.
And all I knew was that she went to Madison
Graduate School of Madison and that her last name was Trojanowski,
which I thought was funny. I was like that that
is pretty amazing. So she's at Wisconsin Madison, she's from Wisconsin,

(34:23):
and you know, her last name was Trojanowski, and she's
in grad school there tro Jannowski. And Kroll was making
fun of her all nights, like that's a linebacker's name
for USC. You going to hit the slats in a minute.
So so that's all I knew about her. So then
we leave Mexico everyone's mad at me for not getting
her number. I was like, oh, this is a stupid thing.
It's it's not gonna happen anyway. Uh. Coincidentally, one of

(34:45):
the writers that the mancho was getting married in Chicago,
like a month later. This was Mark. He was getting
married in May and Chicago's about ninety minute drive from
from Milwaukee. One of the other writers like, hey, why
don't you take tro Janowski. I was like, all, that's great,
but I don't have her number or anything, you know. Crazy.
He's like, if I can get her your number, will

(35:05):
you call her an inviteer. I was like, yeah, sure,
good luck. So not as strict as um they are
these days. I think I think he called like the
Burst Star's office and they basically gave him her phone number.
He puts her number on my desk and I was like, oh,
now I have to do this. So I call her
and I'm like, hey, I don't want to think I'm
stalking you. But and I actually told her exactly what happened.

(35:26):
I'm like, I didn't know your number, but I would
like to take you to the you know, the wedding
here it's in Chicago. And she was like a little
freaked out. She's like, uh, I'm gonna have to call
you back maybe tomorrow. I was like, yeah, all right,
I totally understand. So then like an hour later the
reception is at the Man Show, I was like, I
have a Melissa on the phone with you. Melissa was
the name of my extra for the eight years. And

(35:47):
I was like, oh Jesus, this is gonna be bad.
And I tentatively walked to the phone. I answer it,
and it was the the Melissa's the nu Melissa, the
one I married since I would love to go to
the wedding with you, and we went. We had a
great time, and we saw each other once a month
after that for a year, and then she moved out
to California and we got married. So that that is

(36:08):
an incredible story. Now you have three kids, three boys,
uh and uh and and live in l A together. Now, okay,
so you uh so you were that the reason why
I brought that story up, As you said you were
about it was eleven happened and you're about to get
married to her, I think you said. But so then
what is going on career wise? Yeah, so that's it.
So then, uh, Jimmy is starting um, Jimmy Kimmel Alive

(36:33):
in January. We had pre production in November, so I
got married in September, so that was it. Yeah, then
we started Jimmy Kimmel Alive. We had no guest book. Uh,
the show was on nine pm. The tape at nine pm,
which all the publicists like hated, you know, because they
all have to go. So that's an easy not for
a lot of publicists just based on the time, you

(36:53):
know what, when the show is starting. Plus, Jimmy's Man
show roots ran deep still then, so it was very
tough to get a female guests, so he kind of
had to. You know. The first week, we had Snoop
Dogg as a co host all week, and we had
drinking was allowed in the audience, and then someone vomited
the first night in the audience. And remember Lloyd Braun,

(37:14):
the president of ABC. It's like, hey, I think we
have to class this thing up a little bit. And
little by little we got there. You know, it was
the twelve o'clock show and we got moved to eleven thirties.
That was a nice thing. And now it's now it's
pretty polished and you know, clicking on all cylinders, but
it was not looking good for a while. It really wasn't.
So how many I have no idea how a show

(37:36):
likes that that works. I'm kind of fascinating how many
people are writing when you start the Jimmy Kimmel Show,
when it makes its debut, how many people are on
the writing staff? We had twelve writers, twelve or thirteen writers.
I think there's like fourteen now, so I think we
had eleven or twelve writers. Uh. It was made up
of a whole people of all towards. Like he took
some man show riders with him. Uh, then we had

(37:58):
some Harvard riders and a lot of how Harvard Lampoon
writers end up in late night We had a few
of those. Uh. We had a female writer which was
big at the time. That wasn't wasn't a lot of
that going on, you know. Um, and so that was it. Yeah,
we uh had a nice mix from everywhere. So you
guys will show up, what do you what does it take?
Like what is putting on a nightly show? Take? You
guys would show up at what time and start like

(38:20):
spitballing ideas for that night show, Like what's the day
to day at that time. Well, it's different now. But
when we started the so the show taped at nine o'clock,
it was live UH, and someone came on and you
use the F word. I think the guy that kept
played the punisher and standard the practices didn't didn't catch it.
And he said it like three times and they let

(38:40):
it go like two other three times and they're like,
screw this, you're on a Yeah, you're going on a
six second delay. You're not live anymore. In fact, you're
gonna tape earlier. So that was that. But so when
we taped at nine, we would get there about eleven
and we would spitball ideas from like eleven to one.
Jimmy was there and then he would narrow it down

(39:01):
to like seven ideas flash bits that he wanted to
go out and shoot and UH, and we saw which
three or four of those worked best. That was We
kind of had an unlimited budget back then, so they
wanted to try everything. Like we were spending like thirty
thou dollars on and Act seven. You know, they would
send me to the UH to Chicago for a bacon
eating contest or something. So they said, like, just try

(39:24):
everything and we'll see what works. But that's how it
would work. Jimmy would narrow it down the three um,
three ideas for the show, and it would be like
seven topics to write on and we would write on
those all day. And we're also watching clips like Jimmy
would uh did like a talk soup thing where we
had like a lot of clips from like reality shows
were huge back then. So Joe Millionaire was on I

(39:44):
don't know Millionaire. Yeah, unbelievable concept and uh out of
its time. Yeah, So we would watch all those shows
and the riders would watch those shows. Now we have
TV watchers who are miserable. They have to watch TV
all day, but shows they don't want to watch, you know.
So um yeah, So we would do that and we'd

(40:04):
write jokes the clips and we'd write a good ideas
and uh jokes for the topics of the day which
were rarely political. Uh has changed now now? Was that
more stressful of a job than the Man Show? It's
obviously you're working a lot more. You've got five hours
or so of programming as opposed to a half hour
a week. Yeah, definitely, what it wasn't It wasn't because yeah,

(40:26):
you have to get the product on an hour product
and you have, you know, one day to do it,
and you know that. So if if if an edit
Bate crashes at The Man Show on a Wednesday, when
the show is Friday or Saturday, you're okay. But if
it's crashing like an hour before the show and you
haven't rendered all the graphics for some stupid man on
the street bit, you're in trouble. But the one good

(40:49):
thing about it is uh and Jimmy talked about He's like,
you gotta just get everything to where you know on
The Man Show, I wanted it add a dent, but
because we have this crunch time, we have to at
least get it to ninety and then we happened to
all the show the next day and the next day
and the next day, so you have to have realistic,
exploit expectations. So it's a little less stressful in that respect,

(41:10):
but always a high stress went on a daily show.
Look to your children's eyes to see the true magic
of a forest. It's a storybook world for them. You
look and see a tree, They see the wrinkled face
of a wizard with arms outstretched to the sky. They
see treasure and pebbles, they see a windy path that

(41:30):
could lead to adventure, and they see you. They're fearless. Guide.
Is this fascinating world? Find a forest near you and
start exploring a Discover the Forest dot org brought to
you by the United States Forest Service and the ad Council.
So I'm curious on this, like your trajectory of doing
the Man Show, Ben Stein's Money, and even early days

(41:51):
of Jimmy Kimmel in a pre social media era, like
it seems like things were a lot more free flowing
and there was us like anger all the time. Did
you guys feel that or did you People get angry
just as much at back then, they just didn't have
the same forum to voice it. And the reason why
I asked that is, I'll give you an example when
I was when I was in college, I was an

(42:14):
intern in Congressman Bob Clement's office right in the Nashville
Congressman and I had to open the mail and answer
the phones. That was my job. And so you can
imagine answering the phone in a congressman's office, people are
furious all the time, and opening the mail, people are
furious all the time. But it was like people didn't
have a forum to be able to spread their fury

(42:37):
as rapidly and as expansively, and so most of the
time we were just like, Yeah, that's just a crank, right, Like,
that's just somebody who's angry at the world. You can't
take them too seriously. They're the kind of person who
would call up a congressman's office and cuss you out,
or the kind of person who would write a letter
and really let you have it. And we're like, that's
a small percentage of the overall population. Now, how it

(43:00):
seems like and we didn't allow what they said to
us to dictate the way we behaved. Now it seems
like we allow those same people to dictate what ton
of what goes on in our society today. So the
reason why I'm asking this question is, I'm curious, did
you guys get angry co phone calls and angry letters
back in the day before people had social media, like,
and did you ever see any of that or has

(43:22):
social media changed it relative to your experience? And I'm
sure the show's experience. No, I mean it's it's definitely definitely,
definitely a lot worse now and a lot more stressful,
and that what you have to react to or what
you have to decide is a legitimate complaint or you know,
I mean even with YouTube, we see comments. You know,
I got to run a hidden camera bit and you

(43:42):
know a lot of people could like it, and then
a lot of people could just focus on how mean
it is to you know, like or pick out some
racial aspect to it that doesn't even exist, but get
the conversation going, and then you're like, holy crap, but
do I really have to respond to this? And uh,
we were in trouble though. I will say in the
earl of days, when the Pistons beat the Lakers in
the in the NBA Finals, Jimmy made a comment something

(44:05):
to the effect of Detroit better hope they don't win,
because they're gonna burn down the city if they do.
And uh, this is not good. Detroit was a big
affiliate for us ABC affiliate. Detroit was huge and it
was bad, and he like basically he had like apologize,
like it was really really snowballed. Uh to a point
where we had to do a show a week of

(44:26):
shows from Detroit to kind of make amends. And that
was all he said. That was all he said. That
was it. And by the way, they won and they
burned the city down. We had clips of cars being
overturned for like sixteen hours. You know, craziness, But it
doesn't matter because you just don't. They don't want that
pointed out, so whatever, So we had to make nice there.

(44:49):
But that was a big, big deal. Nowadays it's just
any little thing gets blown out of proportion. And you're right,
because it takes an effort to write a letter. Anyone
could say, Now the tweet and in eight seconds, and
who knows who's reading those tweets or how prominent the
person tweeting is, and and that's that. I mean, you
all don't know that more than anybody. It's it's ridiculous. Yeah,

(45:11):
what I've tried to do, and I don't know if
it's a good thing or a bad thing, but I
have tried to hopefully just power through and not respond
most of the time to critics because look, I'm forty now,
I have been publicly writing for fifteen years, and I've
written a lot of crazy stuff over fifteen years, right, uh,
And I don't think it's I think it's always crazy.

(45:33):
And you guys have videotapes out there and everything else
for people to go back through and say, oh, well
you said in n X or you said in two
thousand four y or whatever else, like yeah, I you know,
like um, and like anybody else, have different views than
I might have had when I was you know, twenty
two or twenty four or thirty four, whatever the math

(45:54):
might be. But the goal, especially with what you guys
were doing, is to be funny. And I always think
we don't look enough at what the intent is behind
something when people get upset, right, Like, it's almost impossible
for a comedian to offend me, because the goal of
the comedian is to make you laugh, and sometimes in
order to make you laugh, you have to say things

(46:14):
that are cringe worthy, right, sometimes well beyond the bounds
of what's acceptable, because you're trying to creatively, uh make
something new. Right. So I think it's wild that we've
ended up in this universe where comedians, of all people,
people are like, oh my god, can you believe that
Trevor Noah said X or Jimmy back in the day,
or David Letterman or anybody else, Like this is crazy

(46:35):
to me, And I feel bad because a lot of
these comedians end up apologizing for you know, they're pad
their act and I don't know if they mean it,
just yeah, someone's offended, so you have to apologize, but
doesn't it's it's I'm sure it's still funny to a
lot of these people, and you know it's it's the
times weren't what they are, they would continue on with

(46:55):
a similar or act. I think some people are grandfather
in we lost Joan Verse, we locked like eighteen months,
and my friend Jeffrey Ross is the Rose Master General
from them. I feel like he's kind of grandfathered into
the whole thing. But I don't know Howard Stern his
grandfathered in. He can stay say pretty much anything. Um.

(47:18):
It's interesting like John Stewart obviously went on to Daily
Show fame, but before he was famous, I remember him
coming to g W where I went to undergrad, and
he did his comedy special there. He was like the
homecoming h performer and he did an entire bit on
which is kind of similar to how Dave Chappelle recently
started his most recent comedy special talking about the Michael

(47:40):
Jackson incident. But but um, John Stewart did an entire
bit on how he thought people didn't talk enough about
how John Bennet Ramsey was a pretty good looking little
girl right like an entire bit, and it was like
at a college, right which nowadays, my god, can you
imagine somebody doing something like that? And it was wildly,
wildly and insanely inappropriate, But it wasn't like anybody in

(48:04):
college protested or like said, oh my god, this guy
could never be a He's a comedian and it may
be wildly inappropriate, but I kind of think that's what
comedians are supposed to be. That's their role because through
satire you can say things that people who are trying
to be serious cannot say right like. And so the
fact that we've lost some of these voices or the

(48:25):
voices are so chilled, is one of the things that
drives me the most crazy about about life. But I'm
sure for what you guys did, I mean, when you're
sitting in a room spitballing ideas, a ton of them
end up being inappropriate, but they also lead to things
that genuinely make people happy, happy and make them laugh
their asses off. Absolutely. Now let me ask you what
would you recommend because because I think you use Twitter

(48:48):
almost optimally right to your advantage. But I don't know,
would you recommend that people delete all their tweets? It's
such a fascinating it's such a fascinating question. Yeah, Like like,
if you're you're a comedian who has a show on
uh you know, not that Roseanne, not that yeah Roseanne
because it was a current thing that that got her

(49:09):
knocked out in the box. But would you recommend like,
why wouldn't you delete all your tweets? Like, I'll give
you an example, like the Guardians of the Galaxy guy,
I think his name is James Gunn. I don't know
if you saw my kids love all the Marvel movies, right,
Guardians of the Galaxy one and two are absolutely phenomenally
well done movies. They're funny, they're smart, like, they're perfectly
well crafted. I don't know that guy from Adam, but

(49:32):
he did such an incredible job on Guardians of the
Galaxy one and two. Then I don't care what he's
ever said in his past. I want him doing Guardians
of the Galaxy three, all right. And then people go
back through his old tweets and they say, oh my god,
back in two thousand nine he made this joke which
is totally inappropriate and the same thing happened to Kevin
Hart when he gets the ability to do the oscars right.

(49:54):
And so the one thing I am somewhat thankful for
is I only came to Twitter is a like I
joined it for my career. So I was always conscious
of this has got like it's going everywhere, and I
wasn't you know, some fifteen year old high school kid
making jokes with my buddies, you know, like before, and

(50:14):
then that suddenly I end up doing what I do now.
But yeah, I I've I've told my kids this, and
I would tell any kids who are listening to this now.
If you are in a public figure, I think when
you go away to college, you should delete everything that
you've ever put out onto the Internet and start a
new and understand that at eighteen, once you become an adult,

(50:35):
everything's public and you gotta be careful about what you're
doing there. And if you become somewhat quote unquote famous
or you have a public job, like all these athletes,
you know, I would tell every athlete you know, Dante
di Vicenzo wins the m v P of the Final
Four right, and then people find out that he's tweeted
out lyrics to uh a Meek Mill song, like when
he was fifteen years old, that's supposedly offensive now, or

(50:58):
Josh Allen's about to be drafted by the bills and
people go back through and they're like, oh my god,
you know he used an inappropriate word when he was
fourteen or fifteen, all of those guys. If I were
running a college, I'd be like, you're wiping all your
social media clean the day you sign a day you
sign a scholarship with us. Right well, let me ask
you this. Uh, Let's say someone approached you. Let's keep

(51:19):
it to you right now. Let's say someone approached you
and said, hey, you have twenty four hours to go
through your Twitter and delete whatever you tend passed that
you think might be uh, might be a little over
the edge. Otherwise we're gonna dig it out. We're gonna
scrutinize you for it. How many of those do you do?
Do you do eat any of them? Or do you
stand by your do you stick your grounds? I think

(51:40):
I'd stick my ground, but that's only because I've been
public since. I mean, look, people have gone back through
my old tweets like I said that, uh, DeMarcus Cousins
would get arrested one day because he got a couple
of double technicals and got kicked out of a game
at Vanderbilt, And I was like, he'll get arrested within
five years. And people go back through and search through
my old tweet to everything else. I first of all

(52:01):
assumed that people have all if you hate me, and
this is really funny to think about. But I just
love the idea of somebody who hates me, like typing
in my name and looking for bad words that I
might have used over the last decade. Right, So I
don't delete very much. I've sent a hundred thousand tweets,
but again, I was aware that I was a public figure,
so I wouldn't be really that I'm not concerned about

(52:22):
somebody going back through my old tweets. It happens. Um.
The only thing I delete is if, like I put
something out that I that later becomes untrue. Like sometimes
people will be like, hey, uh, you know, like I
don't know this guy is gonna sign with with so
and so, and then it turns out that it's not true.
Rather than have people constantly spread something that I tweeted

(52:43):
and commented on that was untrue, like factually untrue, Like
I'll delete those, but otherwise just opinions like I don't
do it. What about you? Have you gone back and
like had somebody like go through? So you'd rather be
offensive than wrong, Yeah, I would rather be offensive than wrong.
And that's a big deal to me, right, Like, I'm

(53:04):
okay if my opinions end up being wrong, if I
look like an idiot on an opinion, but if you,
I get upset at myself. If I'm on the radio
or if I'm on this podcast and I get a
fact wrong, that bothers me because to me, in order
for me to believe in my opinion, I have to
build it on a structure of factual accuracy. Right, So

(53:26):
you may not agree with where I end up. And
that's one of the things that troubles me about society
today is that we don't have a common basis of
facts anymore. It seems like people just make up the
the the underlying facts and then they reach opinions. And
to me, I'm fine with opinions, but they have to
be rooted in some form of reality. For instance, if
you if you told me well, Tom Brady has thrown

(53:47):
more interceptions than he has touchdowns, and therefore I like
the Cowboys to win this weekend. I'll be like, well, no,
that's not like you can't have that argument, right, But
it feels like that we're having the equivalent of those
are gumunths a lot now, where they're based in unsound facts,
and then they lead to even more ridiculous opinions. I'm
fine with crazy opinions as long as they have facts

(54:08):
based on it. And I really genuinely don't care about
offending anybody, right well, I I I don't, except that,
you know, I got a family to raise, and you
know you don't want the sponsors going away, and worse
than that, you don't want crazy people coming to your
house finding out where you live. Yeah, right, So yeah,
I am always thinking about it. I hate that, you

(54:30):
know you're you're creatively blocked by that. But I'm do lying.
If I didn't say I had to stop and talk
a little bit or think a little bit before I sent.
I think years ago, the I had money on USA
versus Puerto Rico in the some some some exhibition game
and USA loss, and everyone knew I had betted, and

(54:51):
I wrote something like Puerto Rico so want Puerto Rico.
We still own you. We will. Yeah, And I don't
think I ever got more trouble now, my oh shit,
I gotta I got rid of this. I'm getting death threats,
like right, So at what point do you you know?
I brought up Matt and Trey before and they were
you know, what what was it that? What was there
a big thing where they they put up like they

(55:12):
put up the Mohammed right, Like wasn't that like they
had they had a character and like, I mean, that's
what they killed those guys for, Charlie hebdo or whatever
in France, in France and France, that's right. So they
those guys push it to the limit and God bless them.
Like I don't know how they they do it, but
I think they're they're and far between those guys and

(55:33):
everybody else. I'll tell you this, this is the one
thing that that that troubles me. You mentioned the wife
and kids and were similar and that you've got three
boys and I've got three boys. I genuinely don't care
what anybody says about me, and you can say that's
a flaw, like I don't. My wife is like I
don't know how you ended up with like that as
part of your makeup. But I just it doesn't impact
me in any way, right, It just like it goes

(55:54):
right over my right, off my shoulders, right over my head,
whatever else. But soon after I started working at Fox
Spike five or six years ago, somebody, well, I bought
my first house in Nashville under my name. You could
type it in you could see exactly where we lived.
I was, not, in my opinion, a public figure at
the time. We lived right downtown. Anybody could drive right
up to my house, get out, ring the doorbell, knock

(56:16):
on the door, whatever else. And when I started working
at Fox Um, I had an opinion. I don't remember
what the opinion was, but it was out there that
somebody didn't like. It was. It was about a football game,
you know, like who's gonna win a football game? Or
coach is not good? And there was a guy on
Twitter who took to Twitter and he UH screened, he
searched out where I lived. He tagged me and my

(56:38):
wife on Twitter and he had a Google image of
my house that he had taken and he said, we
know where you live, and we know when you're in
l A and your wife is home with the kids
by yourself, and so to me, like, when now I
saw that, I'm like, first of all, I'm a you know,
a steadfast First Amendment guy. But I believe that the

(57:00):
guy who tweeted me that should go to jail, right, Like,
I think that that person should be prosecuted to the
fullest extent of the law, and I think he should
go to jail. I think that's way beyond the bounds
of acceptable discourse. All those things. But when we bought
a new house, uh, my wife like, I don't know,
a couple of a year and a half later or whatever, Um,
she was like, I want to buy a new house.

(57:21):
And we bought in a place where you know, like
we didn't buy it under our own name. Uh, you
can't look it up easily. Um. It's not like we're hiding.
It's not like we're in some like you know, undisclosed location.
But that's the only thing that really bothers me about
the world that we live in now is I do
worry about crazy people, not so much for me, but
in some way trying to do something to my wife

(57:43):
or my kids. And that, to me is the really
biggest downside of being in any way a public figure,
and I'm far down the list, but you just don't.
You can't stop crazy, right, And so that's the thing
that probably is the only thing that worries me about
having any kind of public life. Well, I think the
thing that helps is how is Laura with that? Is
she is your wife? Does she liked? Don't worry about it.

(58:06):
We can't give into this stuff. Keep doing what you're doing.
Or is she yeah, my wife is my wife is yeah,
my wife is tougher than I am. So I mean,
now she is like any wife, Like she doesn't listen
to the radio show because she's like, I worry so
much about you because I don't say anything different on
the radio than I say to her. But she's like,

(58:28):
I worry so much about in this day that we
live in that you say exactly what you think every
day and every time you talk, I'm like, oh my god,
don't say that. Somebody's gonna be upset by that. And
I totally understand it. I think it's like being a
parent watching a sporting event, Like it's not that much
fun if you're if your kid is like in a
really tight game, because you're not only watching the game,
hoping they win, but you're like, oh, I hope they

(58:49):
don't screw up, right, Like I don't want I don't
want to, you know. So I think that's kind of
the way that she deals with what I do. What
about your wife? Like does she? How did? How does
she respond to this kind of stuff? Because she's got
a great sense of humor. And I think both of
our wives would not have ended up with us if
they didn't have really good sense of the humor and
also be pretty tough in terms of what we can
say to them relative to what maybe other women might

(59:09):
be upset by. Yeah, she does, and like you know,
but but you know, all it takes is one idiot
in one comment that she runs fast, and I remember,
like you know, it all comes out the house specific
and you gave a specific example about the person knowing
where you live and knowing when your wife and kids
are home alone, and that's what bugs you when they
know the specifics and like you know, on New Year's Eve,

(59:30):
I think I did something to someone in a hidden
camera and offend and like it and uh and they
listen in the comments section, I think a YouTube like
you Deserve to Die and you are going to die
on the four oh five New Year's Eve, so just
watch out. And I was like, shit, I am going
to be on the four h five. It sucks that.

(59:51):
I really Now I have to drive, you know, it
takes an hour to get ten miles anyway after now
go out of my way? What do I What do
I think about this? So? And you know, my cousin
Jimmy gets it much worse, and they get much because
he goes after Trump every night and there are people
or on the other side. But you know, like my
name involved kids and his kid went through something terrible,
horrible surdery when he was very young. And then when

(01:00:12):
they bring him into it, I was like, oh my god,
what what are we doing here? This is uh, this
is really almost run just like the lete Twitter altogether.
I don't know what Twitter does anymore either. I have
overtown a thousand followers and you have more than that.
But I needed people to show off the bar a
Raiders bar. A couple of weeks ago, I'm like, hey,
four o'clock, you'll be on Fox pregame show. Maybe there's

(01:00:34):
tick content for you. Not one fucker show. It is
one person. It is It is frustrating and um, and
I almost feel like there needs to be a sort
of national round table where you're like, hey, it's almost
like the mafia got together and they're like, hey, you
can say whatever you want about us, but you know,

(01:00:57):
wives and kids are off limits. Like, let's kind of
come up with a reasonable approximation of what the rules
should be and uh, and just have people naturally agree
to them. I think one of the challenges we've got
going on right now is the technology is so far
ahead of the moral code. And what I mean by
that is like we had eons to figure out, hey,

(01:01:17):
don't kill each other, you know, like, and then we
had we understood that rule, and we could apply it
for guns, and we could apply it for billy clubs,
and we could apply for whatever weapon was coming down
the pike. Right. Nobody really knows how to respond to
social media, and so, you know, how do you kind
of craft a functional moral code and put it into

(01:01:39):
ordinary speech. And the example I use is, I have
never in my entire life, and you may be shocked
by this, but it's true. I've never in my entire
life had a single person ever come up to me
and say I hate you. And I want to punch
you right now, like you were the worst human being
on the planet. I have like, yeah, yeah, other than
the people that I already know, but I have that

(01:02:01):
happened to me fifty times every day on social media,
and yet in public, I've never had a single And
the exact opposite is true. In public, people come up
to me and they're always like, I absolutely love everything
that you say. Please never change, be the exact person
that you are now. Um, and they've even had it.
Doesn't have It happens every now and then because I
don't block that many people, but I'll have people come

(01:02:22):
up to me and they'll say, hey, you blocked me
like two years ago. I'm a huge fan, I was
really drunk. I'm sorry that I sent you all those
tweets after we've lost a game that you told me
to bet on or whatever. Because I'll just if somebody
tweets me like ten things in a row, I just
block them right like I'm like, I don't want to
get and this is not you know, like um and so.
But even that, like people come up and they're basically acknowledging, yes,

(01:02:42):
you know, I kind of violated the moral code. It
won't happen again. And so I think it's so fake.
It's just so artificial. And that's why letting it drive
our country in any way is I think a broken
fundamental aspect of what we do right. And I get
the same thing. Uh, I'll get people like you can

(01:03:03):
try to get in the Twitter would then I'll rarely respond,
but then I will and I'll be angry. And I'm
like to getting cousin sounds a big fan. I've been
listening to you, So I was like, yeah, like this man,
But I think you're right. It's the same computer towards
approach through the airport. So do have like a zero
percent And I think this should be a challenge for anybody,

(01:03:23):
but zero percent of those who are bandmouthing you online
approach you and and and tell you to your face.
But if that were like that would make life unbearable, right, Yeah, yeah,
we'll be okay. It's not only that. I think it's
the people come up and they want a picture, you know,
like they're like, I'll fight you if I ever see
you in person, and then when they actually see you

(01:03:43):
in person, they say, hey, can I get a picture
with you? And so it's like it's it's just fundamentally
totally different. Fox Sports Radio has the best sports talk
lineup in the nation. Catch all of our shows at
Fox sports Radio dot com and within the I Heart
Radio app search f that's our to listen live. Alright, So, uh,
I've kept you on here for a while on Clay

(01:04:04):
Travis's Wins and Lasses. We're talking to at the Cousins
all on Twitter. So what's next for you? Like you're
on Thursday Night Football now we've got lock it in rolling.
You've been a gambler your whole life, which I haven't
even hardly asked you about. Do you like gambling now
more since your picks are out there publicly or did
you like gambling more before people knew your picks? Oh?

(01:04:25):
I like this before about the threats and everything. Like
I once, uh, you know, I was on the ESPN.
I picked for two years on Thursday nights on Sports Center,
and I was I picked my best Pet's correct and
and I would uh And I was like after they
fired me, and so I had this show, I was like, oh,
maybe I'll just sell my picks. You know. Then you

(01:04:46):
find out pet the shady a scummy business and you
need to be a salesman as much as you do.
You know, pick games right, you have to, you know,
re off the packages and everything. And then I'm like,
what pretty much I'm sinking death threats. You're giving out
free if I'm charging people like I can't do this,
you know so, but now so But anyway, we're giving
off picks online, and yeah, we get a lot of

(01:05:08):
grief and I do. I was, I was gonna ask
you this to like, how does watching the game now
compared to ten years ago, compared to twenty years ago?
I really think I liked it when I first moved
out to l A. And I was at my knees
and my parlays and everything else, and the rooted for
my Cowboys. But it was still a simpler time. And
now there's just like so much pressure to keep up

(01:05:28):
with social mediam and I tweeting him out kind of Sunday,
am I tweeting too much? Why didn't I cover this?
So it is very hectic. Obviously I've made a learn
out of it somehow, the Supreme Court, God blush a
state by state, We're getting there. But I definitely missed
the viewing experience in football. UM back like, uh, like
twenty years ago. I definitely like having the money. I

(01:05:49):
remember there was a time you have Harry, my friend Harry.
Uh we went to college together. You have him on
your day. We would lose a lot of money. We
were down a lot, and I remember a quick Harry
story at a swigo. We were down thousands of dollars
to the local bookie who took a liking to us
and let us for six dollars a game referee the

(01:06:12):
erect league, like twelve year old thirteen year old boys
basketball league. We was at free. I was like, all right,
we're gonna have to ref like three games here. We're
just never gonna do it. So we showed up and
then we started betting each other on the games. We
were refting, so we were terrible. Would be like charge
calls out of nowhere. And we did this for three games.
We were like further in debt with each other. It

(01:06:34):
was ridiculous. Then the parents started getting mad and we
got fired from the job. So it was always snowball.
But um, but luckily I don't have that problem except
for a dumb that with you. Every now and then
we're gonna have to think of another one. Uh, I
could at least cover my losses thanks to Yeah, what
did your wife say when you lost? We lost almost
sixty dollars um betting on the Saints for people who

(01:06:57):
don't know the Saints lost over that awful non pass
interference call against the Rams. What did your wife say
when she realized that that you had lost twenty seven k? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
hopefully she's not. Yeah, yeah, hopefully you won't. Uh. The
original ticket, we add eight dollars or something on it,

(01:07:20):
and then you know, we bought it because it was
it was haying off and I think I think she
thinks that's what we paid or split or something. But
my wife thought that she saw the picture of the
ticket on on social media and she was like, Okay,
it's not that bad. And then she was like she
later heard us talking about She's like, wait, did you
lose twenty seven thousand dollars and say, yeah, I wasn't.
We don't need to talk about that right now. Um.

(01:07:42):
But so it is interesting to think about how quickly
everything has moved there. And I think you were saying,
do what my tweeting enough? Now? No, I pretty much
have decided almost that Twitter is gonna be my forum.
Like I'll go on Instagram sometimes, but I don't really
think people want to look at pictures of me, So
I don't want to end up being the old guy
who's trying to keep up with TikTok and Instagram and
snapchat and everything else. Like if Twitter dies, I'll probably

(01:08:05):
be like, you know what, that was a good run
that I had. It kind of helped me grow my
audience a little bit, but I don't need to be
on you know, like and what was the uh the
thing on Office where the guy had like fifteen different
things all connected where you're constantly communicating. Yeah, which was
just such a great, such a great show, but it
was like wolf Wolf. I feel like it's a wolf
something or other. Um. But but yeah, so so yeah,

(01:08:28):
it is interesting now that people are are paying a
lot of attention to the bet So what You're writing
a book, right, I am, Yeah, throughout this football suit
and to knock out like four thousand words of leak.
But I'm trying to get it. Yeah, I have. I
realized I have enough gambling stories to the last four ties.
But yeah, it's fun. That's uh, you know, you have

(01:08:51):
to just sit down and knock it out. I feel
bad because it's like last on my priority list. I
try to get sucking out Saturday before the Sunday games.
But um yeah, it's it's really weird when the degenerate
I was over the years really was Harry story, like
I had trouble with Like I had a chase guys
that It's funny ironically, I was booking bets and law school.

(01:09:11):
I was going to law school and booking bets and
that was like the only time I made money betting myself,
which hasn't really count of betting yourself. You're taking other
people's bets. But yeah, the the psychology behind it, and
you know this is, uh, people win, they mostly keep
their money in until they lose, and people lose, they
double off until they win, and they never ever do. Now,

(01:09:34):
you're gonna bet once the air during the Super Bowl
or a couple of weeks during the playoffs, you could
get lucky. But if you're taking shots twenty one weeks
in a row for football, it's likely almost definite that
you're gonna be on the minor side. Right. Be sure
to catch live editions about Kicked the coverage with Clay
Travis week days at six am Eastern, three am Pacific.

(01:09:55):
Let me give you a couple more questions here to finish.
Thanks for doing this wins and Losses. I'm Clay Travis.
He at the Cousin sal on Twitter. How did you
meet Bill Simmons and end up doing the podcast? Was
that entirely just through the Kimmel writing staff or did
you guys know each other beforehand? It al was Jimmy
had roasted Shack, had done a roast of Shack, and
Bill had his column on ESPN and he I think

(01:10:18):
he reviews it. I think he did like a timeline
review um of the of the roast, and he was
he wrote a very favorable review of Jimmy, and Jimmy
met him online and then Simmons had this this He
would do ramblings on his column and it would just
be like two line uh, like observations on pop culture events,

(01:10:40):
and Jimmy He's like, this is kind of what I
want from my show, This is what I want for
the monologue from my show. And he hired Bill. He
brought him out from Boston, which is a big move
for Simmons and his family to move out here, and
we hit it off. We shared in an office and
hit it off immediately, and we were like wrestling. We
all always of course like football and gambling on football.
And then on Monday's we would do we would guess

(01:11:00):
the lines for the next week. We would take the USA.
Today we covered up and with guests and we don't
even know what We've been like ten hours each who
would come closest to the lines of the full flight
And then uh, He's like, let's make a podcast out
of this. And for fourteen years we've been doing guests
the lines on Sunday night Monday morning, and people seem
to love that podcast, right, Like, I mean, you know,

(01:11:22):
you get people coming up to you all the time
who are just familiar with your voice, who haven't even
necessarily seen you right through that podcast. I think. So
that's That's what I'm known for. Like I could do
a million hidden cameras or anything else, but I feel
like that's what I'm known for more than anything. Last
question for you. Everybody has different directions that they end
up in their life that otherwise if they don't take

(01:11:42):
that path, they end up in a totally different different person,
maybe a different universe almost. It feels like for me.
I can't imagine what my life would have been if
I hadn't met my wife when I did in law school.
She thinks I would have been a total failure. A
lot of you may think I'm a total failure anyway,
but that's when she believes um. And you know a
lot of spouses probably believed that about their significant others.

(01:12:03):
But for you, you talked about being on that bridge
and your car catches fire. What would you what would
your life be right now? If Jimmy doesn't call and say, hey,
I got this gig for you. You need to come
to l A and take it. Where do you think
you'd be? Oh? Man? Uh, I have another cousin in

(01:12:23):
Spain who has a late night talk show host. Uh.
You know what. I hate to say it, but I'd
probably have to run and retrieve that burning up car
on the tap and Zee bridge and just head to
the next clothing like I think I would have stuck
stuck with law for a while and uh, and then
I would have broken up with a girlfriend and her

(01:12:44):
mother got me the job, So I'd probably have to
work at a shift, working at a dairy barn or something,
and I probably would squander three quarters of my paycheck,
setting three team teasers all week. Honestly, I didn't have
high hopes for myself, I really and I wasn't very motivated.
And like I said, I wasn't you know, I was
a slave to that law that law school loan. So

(01:13:05):
it wouldn't have been pretty let's put it that way.
There's a lot it is interesting, though, so and again
the concept of the podcast is wins and losses, encouraging
people to at time take risks and also recognize that
along the way they're gonna be some failures, but you
obviously are having a lot of successes now. It's lots
of fun to work with you. Anything else you would
say to people as they roll out who may need

(01:13:27):
a bit of wisdom here headed into the holidays, No,
I just think you know, life's too short to be miserable.
You've everyone's heard it before, but it just I think
it's one of the two things. If you're gonna be
miserable at your job, make enough money so that you
can treat yourself right vacation in a couple of weeks
a year, and if you're not in there, take a

(01:13:48):
chance just to roll the dice and take a chance
and do something that you want to do, put yourself
in the field that you could see yourself excelling in
and being interested in going to work for in the next,
you know, twenty thirty years, because that's what it's all about. Uh.
You can watch us every single day four thirty Eastern,
three thirty Central to thirty Mountain one thirty Pacific on
FS one. He's at the Cousin Sal on Twitter. I

(01:14:10):
am Clay Travis. This has been the Wins and Losses podcast.
We're on every day Cousin Sal and I along with
Todd Ferman and Rachel Vanetta on FS one on lock
it In. Good stuff, my man, I appreciate it, and
thanks to all of you out there for listening. I
hope you guys are having great weeks, great years wherever
you are. This has been the Wins and Losses Podcast
with Clay Travis.